Dungeons And Dragons Online: Weekly Development Activities (August 30, 2006)

Samera has posted this week's development activities on the official forums:

Weekly Development Activities (August 30, 2006)

In QA
These items are in QA and should be a part of the next scheduled update - Stormreach Under Siege.

Monsters

* Dead mummies will no longer cause despair.
* Charmed mummies will no longer cause despair in allied players.
* The Warrior of the Six is now correctly tagged as Neutral Evil.

Items

* NEW - The new brigandine armor introduced in the Twilight Forge Module will now appear properly on Drow.

Quests

* Gwylan's Stand
o An influx of foolish adventurers into the area surrounding Gwylan's Stand has allowed the various monsters in the area to accumulate a little more treasure.
* Necropolis
o Bloody Crypt
+ The Lich is now the Black Abbot and not a generic lich.
+ Using the levers to open the east and west wings will correctly report that you used a lever, and not a book.
+ Salasso now wears the correct robe.
o Bloody Crypt Junction
+ Using the waypoint to the burning heart will correctly place you at the side entrance room.
+ You can now see Brother Salasso at work on the Heretical Path from the junction.
o Graveyard
+ Julia has outfitted her tavern with new tables and glassware.
+ The tavern now has a mapnote.
+ Kai-Teng and Dame Calla have unpacked many of their books and papers.
o Tomb of the Burning Heart
+ Fixed several untargettable sarcophagi.
+ Fixed a group of inactive wights.
o Tomb of the Crimson Heart
+ Several undead will no longer spawn on a wall.
o Tomb of the Immortal Heart
+ Only one of each book will spawn.
+ Hell Hounds and Earth Elementals will no longer respawn.
o Tomb of the Sanguine Heart
+ Fixed a broken trap.

Under Development
These items are currently in development and are scheduled for some time after the next update (most likely Module 3).

Performance

* NEW - The landscape renderer has been overhauled to provide better performance (especially load times). In addition, the new landscape engine enables huge draw distances that were not possible before.
* NEW - The overall frame rate has been improved and 'hitching' reduced.
* NEW - Avatars and monsters are now a bit brighter than other objects (the intensity depends upon the environment and lighting conditions).
* Overall bandwidth of the game will be reduced another 1-3%, and certain problematic dungeons and laggy areas will be significantly improved by 20-50% (when your client gets flooded with information about objects in your local area).

General

* NEW - Phantasmal killer is now a fear effect.
* Players will no longer get stuck while dismounting from ladders.
* We are pleased to announce the addition of the /showhelmet <on | off> command which can be used to hide your helmet graphic.
* We are improving the combat/damage feedback mechanism. This will not only eliminate "false" hits where the target would flinch but no attack roll would take place, but also give better feedback as to the strength of the hit.
* NEW - When you successfully swap a spell, you will now get an alert telling you that it worked.
* NEW - Lava Cam! When your camera is in lava, it now looks more like it's in lava, as opposed to water.
* NEW - Made some small tweaks to our avatar animations. For example, human female's wrists won't twist in the dual weapon combo attack, dwarven arms won't over-extend when they use an axe to cleave, etc.

Monsters

* NEW - Several bow wielding enemies will now shoot various energy arrows like flaming arrows or cold arrows. These will do the typical piercing damage (1d6 and up) in addition to various amounts of energy damage.
* Widow type spiders will once again shoot functional webs.
* Elemental Empathy will work properly on Earth Elementals that have used their Earthgrab ability.
* NEW - Female humanoid villains will no longer charge into melee range if armed with spells or bows.
* We are fixing an issue with the death animations of Arcane Skeletons. They will no longer "eat collectables" they should be creating.

Skills & Abilities

* NEW - Bards can now activate their singing abilities while moving! The activation time on their singing abilities has been reduced significantly as well. An animation glitch has also been fixed!
* NEW - The description for the Paladin's Lay on Hands ability has been corrected to better describe the amount of healing/damage that the ability does.